Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

What with all the modern advances in metalurgy does any one know any of the basic properties which are desirable in wires use for piano "stringing". For example is the "ultimate tensile strength" the deciding factor ? I was looking at a Japanes manufacturer, Nippon Seisen Co., Ltd. and they recomend a particular wire (NA301H).

Since I might have a try at replacing the blackish looking plain strings on my daughter's 1900 straight strung Broadwood upright. Would it be reasonble to keep the wires at the same diameters ? I ask this because, with improvement in metalurgy, replacing using a slightly smaller diameter (less weight), string would require less tension for the same pitch.

If I was them I would sell the information, this is personal I think, see the numerous answers.

The first thing you may want to know is how tense (not in Kp but in % from Breaking point) modern wire will be if you use the same diameters.Possibly all the bottom part of mediums will be untense,to the point without enough stretch the string will be not resilient enough and will make a nasal & hard tone .

Straight strungs verticals of that era where in the 50 -60 Kg tension range - today pianos are in the 75 Kg range.

The string differs.

You need to measure the length and diameters for all the A's or all the C's. Enter that in a a scaling worksheet an look at the "solicitation". there are sheets working in inches and with Imperial measures/gauges, mines are in mm.

Low stress raise the iH an the tone is badly defined because of that. but that is not the only parameter affected.A string is said to sound at its best a little before the beginning of the elastic limit. (the same for violins, probably guitars, etc) .With only 2 possible choices of strings, most of the techs did not have the opportunity to think about that.

Edited by Olek (06/17/1404:33 PM)

_________________________
It is critical that you call your Senators and Representatives and ask them to cosponsor S. 2587 and H.R. 5052. Getting your legislators to cosponsor these bills